DOVER — Kathryn “Kat” McDonough testified Tuesday that she felt she had no “option” but to bring a female college student into her sexual relationship with former boyfriend Seth Mazzaglia, a Dover man standing trial for allegedly murdering that student.

Kyle Stucker

Editor's note: This story includes graphic content.

DOVER — Kathryn “Kat” McDonough testified Tuesday that she felt she had no “option” but to bring a female college student into her sexual relationship with former boyfriend Seth Mazzaglia, a Dover man facing murder charges in the death of that student.

McDonough, 20, formerly of Portsmouth, broke down in tears several times during her testimony at Strafford Superior Court. She said she brought University of New Hampshire sophomore Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott into her emotionally controlling and sexually dominating relationship with Mazzaglia because he had brutally sodomized her roughly one month earlier as “punishment” for “failing” to find him a female sex “slave” before McDonough left for a 12-day summer camp.

McDonough's testimony about the punishment, which Mazzaglia allegedly warned her about in a lengthy and graphic text message read aloud in court Tuesday, came after she testified Mazzaglia used a rope to kill Marriott in front of her on Oct. 9, 2012, and that she did nothing to stop Mazzaglia.

“It was just a very rough encounter,” McDonough, said of the punishment, using a tissue to wipe her eyes. “It was a lot of hitting and, like he wrote, the twisting and smacking. It's hard for me to bring back — it just really … it was really rough, and now looking back on it, it was not something I wanted to do. I know I didn't have an option because I knew I had messed up and I knew he expected me to take the punishment, so I did.”

Mazzaglia's texts describing the punishment included a description of what he hoped to do to an unnamed friend of McDonough as part of the punishment. “I think it would be fitting if the first thing you saw me do when you got back is pleasure one of your friends until they died of orgasms and only then turned my brutal attention to you,” Mazzaglia allegedly wrote in the texts, which McDonough later said shocked her.

McDonough testified for the first time Tuesday as part of the fifth day of Mazzaglia's trial. He is accused of raping and strangling Marriott after she rebuffed his sexual advances while the trio played strip poker.

McDonough said it “meant a lot” for her to “try and please him.” She also said it made her feel as if she were worthless when she was “very unsuccessful” over a period of several months while trying to find him a young, slender woman willing to join them in bondage-style sexual activity.

“When I couldn't do that, it made me question everything about myself,” she said.

McDonough said she considered Marriott as a potential sexual partner because she was a “beautiful person” who was “just so happy” and “seemed so content with what was happening” in her own life. McDonough said Marriott always offered to help her and other people, and that Marriott was “silly in a good way.”

Numerous people in the gallery began to cry upon hearing these descriptions.

After the punishment in September 2012, McDonough said Mazzaglia urged her to recruit Marriott because she was a “real potential” sexual partner because of her physique and personality. She said Mazzaglia also conveyed that he believed he formed some sort of connection with Marriott after he came home on Oct. 2, 2012, and found Marriott and McDonough watching a movie in the apartment he shared with McDonough. It was the first time Marriott had been in the apartment.

Mazzaglia allegedly told McDonough to set up an Oct. 9, 2012, hangout in which McDonough should “jokingly” suggest the three of them play strip poker. McDonough said Mazzaglia thought it “seemed safer” if McDonough suggested it, and therefore more likely for Marriott to want to participate.

Tuesday's portion of the trial ended just as prosecutors began talking about the minutes surrounding Marriott's arrival at Mazzaglia's apartment on Oct. 9, 2012.

Earlier in the day, McDonough was asked several questions related to her sexual relationship with Mazzaglia, which she said started as a “submissive” bondage-style relationship and increasingly became more of a “slave” relationship in which McDonough said her sole purpose during sex was to please Mazzaglia.

The defense for Mazzaglia has claimed McDonough acted as a “switch” and that at times she was sexually dominant of Mazzaglia. McDonough said Tuesday, though, “it just never happened that way.” She said Mazzaglia was dominant “like, all the time” during a sexual relationship that featured this kind of activity “at least once a day, if not, like, up to six or nine times a day.”

“(If he wanted sex), then that's what we did,” McDonough testified. “I didn't really decline or hesitate because I knew he would get upset.”

Several graphic messages between Mazzaglia and McDonough were shared aloud in court, including details about the couple's experiences with “breath play,” the type of sex act in which the defense has argued that McDonough — not Mazzaglia — killed Marriott.

McDonough, who lived in Portsmouth and was 17 when she said she began a sexual relationship with Mazzaglia in October 2011, was brought to court Tuesday from the state women's prison in Goffstown, where she is serving time for her role in Marriott's death.

McDonough described Tuesday why she was initially drawn to Mazzaglia romantically and physically. “He was always telling me how beautiful I was and made me feel special,” she said. “He made me feel like I was very important, that, like, I was the one for him.”

While McDonough testified she loved the attention from Mazzaglia and that he helped her overcome some of her childhood feelings that she “wasn't good enough,” McDonough also testified that he made her feel something “really bad would happen.” She said he made a variety of references to the “darkness” within him taking over if she didn't cut ties with her mother, move out of her parents' house and into his Dover apartment, and, later, bring other women into their relationship because McDonough wasn't spending enough time with him.

“I was worried that he would also get really angry and potentially violent,” she said.

Prosecutor Peter Hinckley read aloud in court Tuesday numerous Facebook and text messages Mazzaglia allegedly sent to McDonough before she moved in with him in February 2012, four months after their friendship turned sexual. Some of the messages asked McDonough for permission to use other women as sexual “targets,” while Mazzaglia said in others that being with McDonough would “help pass the time and keep our shadow brains placated for a while” so he wouldn't have to go “running out, seizing the first young woman I see and doing something horrible.”

“When u (sic) are with me, the darkness subsides, even begins to go away unless I specifically call it out,” Mazzaglia wrote to McDonough, according to Hinckley. “But — if I'm going to be waiting until the spring for you to move in, my darkness is going to grow a lot stronger if I don't *do* something with it.”

McDonough testified she was originally conflicted about bringing other women into the relationship, though she said she reconsidered because of potential repercussions from a man she said she believed had “psychic” powers and “could alter things that might happen.”

“He made it seem like such a good thing, but at the time I didn't really want to share him,” McDonough said. “I wanted it to just be me. It seemed like things would just get worse if it was just me and he really needed someone else.”

Mazzaglia's lawyer has told jurors that McDonough killed Marriott during a rough form of sex that involved restraints. They say Mazzaglia helped dispose of her body and initially took blame out of his obsessive love for McDonough.

Both sides agree on one thing: McDonough witnessed Marriott's death.

McDonough pleaded guilty in July for her role in the case and was sentenced to 1½ to three years in prison in exchange for cooperating with investigators and her testimony during Mazzaglia's trial.

McDonough is expected to testify again today. Tuesday's testimony ended before questioning was to begin about the night Marriott died.

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